Notions (Part 2 of ?)

Friend Davey

responded in some detail to a post of mine from earlier this week:

"When you first mentioned Punch and Judy in your blog, I imagined it as

giant oversize puppets looming over you and Heather. I think I even

went

so far as to describe it like that to a friend of mine. So when later,

you

posted about P&J and then about Stilt costuming insects later, I was

confused, b/c in my head you had already mentioned doing Punch as giant

oversize

puppets, why split them up! So I had to re-read and

understand that

somehow I had added the giant puppets into the mix. What is

Patrick's Sukeu

mask?I saw your sister this weekend and she told me that her

biggest shock was

seeing you come out playing the Trombone. I can't

believe I missed it. The

clown film is ambitious, and ultimately sounds the

most... you I guess.

The most all around you. You've lived in the city

for the better part of your

adult life. It's about time you made it a

thank you card you ungrateful

bastard :P Seriously though, I think the clown

film would be an amazing

piece. Planning on staying in one clown for

the duration will be

challenging no? Does he go back to boring drab at

the end, or does he find

the rest of his troupe?"

All excellent, thought-provoking responses, Davey (even without the bizarre poetic structure Blogger decided to enact upon it), and I thank you and encourage everyone who's interested to chime in on these things. I've been giving a lot of thought to the subject of collaboration lately. So much so, it may be a good new topic heading. Now, if that isn't momentous, I don't know what is.

And I admit: I probably

don't

know what is.

The Punch & Judy thing is in such early stages of development that it's hard to say just what it will be. It's entirely possible that it would--at least at some point--involve Heather and I dressing in enormous P&J puppets, like you see in the NYC Halloween Parade. However, I'm more interested in keeping it simple to begin with, and exploring the characters and situations associated not only with the story itself, but the history of its audiences as well. I mean, we were watching Punch and Judy from an early age. It's just that

Mister Rogers

made them be nice to one another.

Years ago

Friend Patrick

, who is a brilliant mask maker and actor, made me a mask styled after discussions we'd had and named after the alter ego Friend Davey bestowed upon me in high school. It's very raven-like, with a rather long, stout beak and round eyes and for years now I've only played with it in private, experimenting and trying to allow, rather than force, what that character wants to be.

The clown film (working title:

Red Signal

) is ambitious indeed, particularly given that I know virtually nothing about film making and have no budget even for my day-to-day life, much less for a film. Still, for a couple of years now I've been mulling over the possibilities for making a sort of digital video demo of the piece, and Davey's questions help to move it along. No, it would not be hard to stay in the same clown the whole time. I'd have to chart out his progress to keep it all organized in my mind while filming non chronologically, but it would be essentially my personal clown character, and that's not hard for me to access or stay in. Now, as for the end: Good bloody question. I never thought he'd go back to drab completely, but it's a possibility. I also never even considered that he might find his "troupe." I got locked into thinking of it as a love story with a girl/city, but maybe it could be different.

Also, a couple of other things tickling my fancy (which is illegal in some states):

• Directing now, as an adult, a short play I tried to direct toward the end of college: Mimosa Pudica, by Curt Dempster. First step would be rereading the thing, because it's entirely possible that my tastes have changed. Drastically. But this is my first mental in-road to the possibility of directing more.

• Writing a show called . . . wait for it . . . The Project Project. This may be the stupidest idea I've ever had, but I'm particularly ticklish to it. The idea would be to write a play based on my experiences trying to collaborate to create a play. The idea is a comedy, for now, and would somehow revolve around the action of making a show from scratch, from beginning to end. I recognize this may be a completely Freudian impulse (no, not that kind)--trying to exert control over something inherently uncontrollable (oh...okay: that kind).

Notions (Part 1 of ?)

• A Punch & Judy themed show with Friend Heather, incorporating elements from the entire history of the characters, but ultimately modern and strange and funny.

• A monodrama about my relationship with comicbooks and superheroes(TM). I started this a few years ago, creating thirty-odd pages of single-spaced, freestyle text, and ended up with a last couple of pages that were pretty effective. Also, Friend Patrick and I took some moments in a room to work on physical bits for it (though I probably never mentioned that was what I was doing, Patrick).

• A clown version of Romeo and Juliet, in Italian and English. Zuppa's been bouncing this around since our last trip to Italy (see most of June '07) as a possible collaborative project between ourselves and our Italian counterpart(s), though now it seems a little too ambitious for a first project, not to mention whilst trying to tour Silent Lives at the same time. Still, it grabs my imagination. What I imagine is a largely silent production, with all in clown noses which are gradually stripped away as the lives of the characters become more perilous.

• A werewolf novel that I haven't made real progress on in years ("Been working on that, what, three years now?"), but continually think about and occasionally daydream into.

• A clown film I keep taking notes on, wherein a working stiff in New York gets magicked into a clown accidentally, which renders him completely amnesiac about how to get through a day in the city, but also grants him acrobatic ability. It would be filmed entirely on location, with strangers and actor friends playing various urban creatures, and ultimately be a sort of love poem to the city, along the lines of J. Alfred Prufrock. "If I thought my answer were to one who could return to the world, I would not reply, but as none ever did return alive from this depth, without fear of infamy I answer thee." Translation by G.B. Harrison et al., eds. Major British Writers.

• To use Friend Patrick's Sukeu mask in performance.

• To construct a stilt costume incorporating arm extensions with working hands or claws, possibly along the theme of a praying mantis.

• To engineer and construct homemade stilts with jumping capability.

• To pick up the trombone again, much to the chagrin of my neighbors.

Making a Stand(ard)

Hi. I was wondering if I could be let back into your life. You can't see me now, so I'll just let you know that I'm standing, in a trenchcoat, outside my car, holding a boombox over my head and looking mournful. Sure, the boombox is playing "Life Is just a Bowl of Cherries" rather than something romantic that we got freaky too (like "The Thong Song"), but that's just because I'm stuck in the '30s, and can't get out. At least, not until October 21.

Some people are genuinely upset with me for being so absent.Not so much on the ‘blog—that, at most, inspires increased frustration with work-induced boredom—but more in general.I never write.I never call.The least I could do is ‘blog every now and again, just so you know I’m still alive as you sit there, reading in the dark without your glasses, two miles in the snow uphill both ways.I am sorry, truly.I have had a worry or two of my own, you know.Nothing to rival your worries, and of course the greatest worry I have is that something terrible would happen to you and I wouldn’t know about it because I have been so selfish, and unworthy of your thoughtful consideration.You have, at the least (as you lie in traction from your tragic tractor trajectory) this comfort:It has been in the name of Art.

And fart jokes.

Look here to see what has been so occupying now that I’ve not been available.Oh, I can’t trust you to links!It’s Zuppa del Giorno’s first original creation in a year-and-a-half: Prohibitive Standards. If you do take the “here” link above (and how much better it is to live in the here and now), you’ll see that a tremendous amount of work has gone in to creating this show, and the ‘blog(s) don’t hardly reveal but half of the actual salt-water work (that is: sweat and tears [thank you, Friend Kate]) what’s gone into this production.The rehearsal room, after all, is where all the material for Zuppa’s shows really springs from, and for the past three weeks we’ve been gathering in a room (or two) to make our baby.

I had previously attempted to ‘blog about the process of that, but never got very far, because I was constantly off to learn music, or watch movies, or try to master a front handspring.OR, to balance my life.Because that’s a special effort too, when you’re an actor of somewhat modest means working out of town. It’s important to acknowledge that aspect of The Third Life©. From balancing one’s checkbook, to reminding one’s parents that he or she is not, in fact, home to be visited, to maintaining some sense of home and personal identity amidst characterization and shacking up in someone’s guest room, the traveling artist has a lot to contend with.Not that it’s not without its perks, either.New experiences are fantastic fuel for creative endeavor, and it’s easier to obsess (constructively, we hope) without frequent reminders of responsibilities.

One of my previous attempts at ‘blogging on this process was entitled “A Host of Angles.”I’ve written to some extent already about the unique process of creating a show from improvisation in my experiences with UnCommon Cause Theatre and Zuppa del Giorno, but never since opening the Aviary have I been so close to the process, nor has it culminated in quite the same way.Prohibitive Standards will be performed in a structured improvisation style.It will never solidify entirely. It will always be different. This means that the same concepts applied to making the show from the ground up will be applied in making it work when the curtain goes up.That creates an intense energy in which one has to set rules for oneself in order to be ready for anything that could happen on stage.We’ve constructed a scenario—or sequence of necessary actions—as our rules, within which we can play and stretch and improvise.In this way, the energy of a performance is very much like live sports, for both the participant and the observer.Everyone’s eager to see what happens next.

But “A Host of Angles”?Well, the most impressive reminder I was receiving about this process when I came up with that title (a lifetime ago, on September 15) had to do with the abandonment of structure and the necessary mastery of the elements of a play involved in creating one by committee, from scratch.In a more standard process, there is a sequence of events and a hierarchy of authority.Typically, the play passes from playwright to producer to director to actors, with very little passing back, and each party has a sequence of gradual development that results in a finished product.In creating a show in the living tradition of commedia dell’arte, however, everyone fills each role in some fashion all the time.One moment you are discussing character arcs, the next you’re leaping around imitating a boiling tea kettle, and still the next you’re trying very hard to be open and objective as you argue for more time for acrobatic training.Rehearsals end, of course, eventually, but they never really do, because everything you see, feel and do at all times goes into the soup, and as a producing playwright directactor, you never stop thinking about and discussing the show.Rather than a sequence of creation, you are coming at an intangible goal from every angle at once, and a lot of the time it feels as though you’re completely wasting your time, spinning your wheels while nothing productive takes place.But I leave out here, as something too obvious to mention, a critical ingredient in this creative soup: Faith.

However we got here, here we are, with a complete scenario that we may even manage to remember and properly reproduce on preview night, this Thursday.It has been a tremendously ambitious project, involving collaboration with Marywood University, regular workshops and training sessions with students and a good deal of marketing.Not everything has turned out the way I had hoped: the student actors are not as involved in the story as I would have liked, there's less emphasis on vaudeville than I had imagined and our physical daring, so prominent in the last two shows, has taken a backseat (necessarily) to an intricate story.However, I am very proud of what we’ve made, and excited to add an audience.Everyone is doing something they never thought they could do before, including me.

What new am I doing?I’d like to keep it a surprise for anyone who can make it out.Let’s just say that my embouchure hasn’t been in this good a shape since I was fifteen.

Many Happy Returns

No doubt you're all wondering why you've not heard from me on here in a while. Further, your frustrations over that (if frustrations there be) are about to be further compounded by this entry, the purpose of which is not to write so much about me as about someone who is very dear to me. He isn't even an actor (at least he hasn't been [in the traditional sense] since high school), but today is his birthday, and his family is just as clever as he is, so one of his sisters invited all of we--his 'blogified friends--to dedicate an entry to

David Mr. Younce

today. It is my pleasure to do so.

It's little known, but Dave Younce is actually a 350-year-old werewolf who belongs to all the important secret societies, including The Knights Templar, the Free-Masons and the Illuminati. He helps to keep this information discrete through a manipulation of seemingly inconsequential circumstances and details that somehow cumulatively result in a complete opacity of actual information. These masterminded manipulations require a comprehension and pattern recognition to perceive that is so vast, no normal man may achieve it. For years, the doctoral-level theoretical mathematicians at all the major American scientific universities have had their equivalent of a regatta, by way of a contest to be the first to determine what Dave will do next. To date, only two, Mensa-level mathematicians have succeeded. One promptly disappeared on an ill-advised expedition to the Amazon. The other immediately went insane. Dave is a figure of mystery and illusion who must never be gambled with, deceived (as if such a thing were possible) and who will swiftly assassinate irritating people with the power of his mere intention.

Not really, though. (As far as I know.) But Dave

is

one of those people about whom one has stories that seem almost of necessity fictional. I have spent the past few days trying to decide what is my best Dave story. Truly, there are too many to choose from. There's Dave the frustrated genius, who conceives ideas for engrossing fiction like each was an easily-dispensed pellet of Pez. There's Dave the adventurer, who appreciates better than anyone else I know the merit of following through on what seems a crazy idea. There's Dave-as-Mickey-Goldmill, who is always in one's corner for incidents from encouraging work on a project to understanding how tough life can get. There's Dave the Mastermind, who, you'll suddenly discover, has thought five steps ahead of you on a given day and, actually, is the reason you're where you are, doing what you're doing, that day to begin with. To top it all off, he's just a great, great friend--the kind you are always grateful for.

This last characteristic is perhaps the source of one of, if not the, best Youncey stories I have.

The best thing I can say about my experience of the summer of 1996 was that Dave was a huge part of it. It was the summer after our freshman years of college, his at BYU and mine at VCU. However it happened, we ended up hanging out more that summer than we ever managed in high school, and did I ever need it. I was working at a mall branch of Circuit City, in a bizarre state of quasi-break-up with my girlfriend and just generally confused and pissed off. So Dave and I passed the summer in good part talking about girls, drinking late-night Slurpees and having strange adventures. We would give one another "assignments," things to write or accomplish or retrieve that made mundaneness of growing up much more interesting. One day, Dave's assignment to me was to meet someone on a train platform toward sunset and speak specific words to him; something along the lines of, "No news is good news."

Well, I followed through, and sure enough there was a large man sitting alone on the platform, wearing unnecessary sunglasses and reading a newspaper. (The "man" was a mutual acquaintance, Chuck, but I didn't really know him well and for a minute of surveillance there I really thought I was dealing with a stranger.) What followed were hours of adventure as Chuck drove me to another location to meet another contact. I was completely out of control of my circumstances, and all my "contacts" were in character, mysterious figures who fed me tidbits of story but never answered a question directly. They were all mutual friends (including my erstwhile girlfriend--a deliciously dangerous twist), a network of game-playing cronies who executed this amazing real-life theatre. From train station, to park, to bank, to highway, every person I met had new information for me about my ultimate goal: to confront the mysterious "Condor." It went off beautifully, and mind you this was before everyone in the world had cell phones. The only glitch I knew about happened at the end, when the last contact dropped me off at the wrong end of the field behind my house, the end Dave had parked at. I knew I was to meet the Condor on that field. When Dave saw me crossing the street toward his car, he hopped out and addressed me by my codename. I was so into the game, however, that I thought it was a trick or test (no one who knows him would put it past him) and insisted on getting to the field. I did, to find a mini arena for our final confrontation. Dave eventually joined me (presumably after chewing out the last contact a bit) and we went to meet everyone who had been involved at a local restaurant.

Why that story, apart from not having had any experience like it before or since? Because it shows just how far Dave will go for a great experience with friends, his love of detail and creation, and because it demonstrates just how cool my friend Dave Younce is. Happy birthday, Youncey. You're (still) the best.

SO . . . MUCH . . .. BRAIN . . . 'ASPLODING . . .!

Hi. Hi. Hi.

That's kind of the rhythm of my life this week.

Hi. Hi. Hi. Very precise, slightly manic in pace. It would be mostly the good kind of stress (what "good" kind, you ask -- the kind that comes of having too much to do

as a result of

lots of stuff one loves

...an important caveat) except that nobody's personal life takes a holiday without extreme measures, and I've had several reminders over the past ten days or so from said personal life as to how trivial some of my stress is. Which compounds it with a sense of guilt. Which is about par for the course for yours truly.

There was this week, back in

college

, when I essentially disappeared for several weekdays in a row. I think it was during my Junior year, and it was highly uncharacteristic of me, at least in one sense. That sense being about how I was Super Student in college. I dove into my work with untempered zeal, and didn't really start to surface until some time mid-Senior-year. In another sense, it was utterly characteristic of me, because what prompted my dive into working solitude (relative solitude) was a certain powerful emotional response to events in my personal life. So Junior year, having no increased work to dive into, I took a time out. It was quite unintentional, and I look back and marvel at how easily I did it . . . and how, even once I recognized I was doing it, the recognition didn't prompt concern for my own well-being. I finally came out of my room, and just went about my business as I always had before.

That's the kind of "extreme measure" I refer to, and it is not an adult option. Sure, everyone needs some time off once in a while, from work, from friends, etc., but short of entering an institution for the treatment of nervous breakdown there is no healthy way to rest from who one is, or one's current responsibilities. And really, I don't want to. I want to achieve, and change, and all that good stuff. Good stuff, nonetheless, can at times be overwhelming.

Another thing I did in college, a healthier and more repeated thing, was to make a B.F.L. in times of many goals, such as when finals rolled around. "B.F.L." is a reference to the PC game

DOOM

, which I'm not proud of, but thought I ought to own up to. It stands for "Big F'n List," and was essentially just that, comprised of everything I had to get done before a given period of time was out.

Now, for certain pragmatic reasons, I can't list all the to-dos here so, in the spirit of

As Far As We Know

's launching notice, I present the short list:

• Work enough hours at day job to cover lack of pay at upcoming gig
• Do laundry
• Clean apartment
• Pack for two months away
• Forward mail to working address
• Interview folks
• Brush-up rehearsals for As Far As We Know
• Two performances to "close" As Far As We Know
• Write "closing-night" cards for As Far As We Know
• Arrange dates to breach upcoming contract in order to perform in potential re-up of As Far As We Know
• Figure out and arrange transportation for Pennsylvania-New York commute for re-ups
• Plan curriculum for workshops launching Prohibitive Standards rehearsal period
• Continue research for Prohibitive Standards
• Contribute to Prohibitive Standards collaboration forum
• Maintain exercise regimen, sleep schedule and sanity

I'm not trying to impress you. Okay, well, yes: I crave sympathy. But I have friends with a lot more on their plates--in school, for (a big) one--and I'm aware that all this comes from good tidings, not to mention said reminders of late about how trivial such concerns are in the face of issues such as life, death and family. So, more to the point, I list my pre-Sunday to-dos in order to set them down, make them seem more manageable and share a slice of my life when it's in this mode.

The keen-eyed amongst you may have noticed that I rather slipped in there the possibility of a re-up of As Far As We Know. (It being a mere possibility at this stage is yet another in a long line of inadvertent puns on our title.) I don't want to jinx anything, but the sentiment from our side of things is that when a show gets such press as ours has, it's a good idea to use that momentum whilst it is most momentous. This has long been the goal of our esteemed production team (read: Laurie and Kelly): to get the show supported or otherwise picked-up by a more major theatre. There's a very interesting double-motivation here--one for success in our creation, and one for success in spreading the story and awareness of the Maupin's struggle. That, I suppose, is the balance to all the hassles of creating one's own work: that you will really, personally care about getting it out there.

Which leads us to my present conflict--eager for resolution, but utterly lacking in information to resolve. Both shows are very personally important to me, and both rather rely on my presence. The Zuppa del Giorno shows have been my greatest priority, and my most evolved work, for close to five years. I love them: They are me as an actor, in so many ways. This project is far and away our most ambitious and exciting to date, with a cast of five plus student actors, and performing in two venues. As Far As We Know has been in collaboration for over two years, I've been with it since nearly the beginning, and it's also a creator/actor piece. Now it has the hope of reaching a larger audience than any of my work has to date, and I'm loathe to let go of it, even for a few performances. The two don't absolutely conflict, but decisions are on the horizon. Here's hoping the fates are pleased.

Why, you may ask, in the midst of this would he take time from his day to write here? It would actually be worse if I didn't. Somehow staying connected on the Aviary helps to keep me connected to myself, if just a bit more. Doing less has never given me more sense of peace. Doing more of what I love inevitably does.

So there's much to do before I leave. I appreciate my friends' understanding of that. Hopefully I can make it up to them before "Hi. Hi. Hi." becomes "Bye. Bye. Bye."

And not in that nice *NSYNC way, either.

Oh, get over yourself. You were right there with me.